DWi-P supports the pedestrian life of Lower Manhattan through sound and movement. DWi-P offers the sound of WaTER, supported by stairs, walkways, and ramps through a transparent community building that welcomes Lower Manhattan visitors to Battery Park City. Sound and a green roof permeated by stairs, ramps and walkways, link the Battery Park City Ballfields to North End Avenue through DWi-P’s WaTER façade: a unique digital artwork, activated through cellphone technologies.

DWi-P’s façade makes an edge to the Murray-Warren Passage, a new parkway link between Murray and Warren Streets. Visitors to DWi-P can walk along the Passage, adjacent to the inscribed score, or move up through the building, using exterior stairs and ramps built into the facade. hMa Principal Meyers catalogs DWi-P and hMa’s collaboration with composer M.J. Schumacher in her recently published book, Shape of Sound (May 2014, Artifice Books London).

DWi-P’s internal program continues the theme of water: the pool room and swim program are the principal program areas in the building. DWi-P is operated by Asphalt Green, an organization that specializes in teaching swimming. Graduates of the program have participated with U.S. Olympic Swim Teams. The program includes visits by previous Olympic team members.

Won Buddhist Retreat is another hMa project with Sound and Movement as part of an overall architectural program. The Won Buddhist Retreat emphasizes sound through a program where sound is programmed. The meditation hall is programmed for silence; other areas are designated for conversation.

At Won Buddhist Retreat, programmed movement is determined through walking paths, courtyards, and shaped roofs. Walking paths include predetermined paths through residential and public courtyards, for silent meditation; and nature paths through meadows, from the residential areas to the public domain of meditation hall and visitor’s center.

04/01/2015

Above: Research: Woven Fabric: the operation of taking a photograph of a face, and fracturing it into fragments. The lines that crack the image of the face apart, make a weave, and the weave takes on an equal interest to the original image. It was this approach, of finding a way to 'weave' fragments of parks through the Battery Park City North Neighborhood, that guided hMa's approach and our research into how to design a large urban neighborhood in New York City.

Above: Location maps of the area of Battery Park City where hMa created the master plan for the North Neighborhood.

Above: Diagrams of hMa's approach to their urban design approach at the North Neighborhood - where we start with a complete figure that is being tested by a set of woven forces, and then the resulting condition we came to, where hMa creates a woven fabric for the neighborhood.

To walk you through hMa's project, we will begin at the North Neighborhood dog park, located at the center of North End Avenue, and proceed south, to the Irish Hunger Memorial - a built intervention that is at once a memorial to the Irish famine (by Brooklyn artist Brian Tolle), and also - a park, and also - a building (the hunger library by 1100 Architect).

Above: a view of Nelson Rockefeller Park. This is a park that functions much like the face where we started : as a series of woven green zones that runs the full length of the North Neighborhood, from North to South.

Above: a typical image from Teardrop Park, a park located very near the center of the North Neighborhood. This is a park designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, in collaboration with hMa. The decision was to move huge boulders from upstate New York in order to recreate the sensibility of the original Manhattan landscape, prior to the European settlement, and development, of the Island.

Directly across from Teardrop Park, is the building and Park designed by hMa: DWi-P. Above: hMa's DWi-P facade, an elevation that edges a a walkway devised by hMa, linking Murray and Warren Streets, the Murray-Warren Passage.

Above: Materiality of the park at DWi-P: a steel handrail edges hMa's ramp, which leads to the roof of DWi-P, which is also a park, where parents can watch their kids playing ball at the BPC Ballfields. A wood trellis marks the top edge of the DWi-P roof.

DWi-P: a park that is dedicated to moving, walking, thinking. The glass facade has an embedded sound piece by New York composer Michael J. Schumacher: WaTER.

03/29/2015

Above: section - perspective through the facade of DWi-P: Digital Water i-Pavilion, by hMa. DWi-P takes on overtones of movement, thought, and time, and contemporary cell phone technologies.

Above: The facade of DWi-P. DWi-P: invisible buildings disappear as landscape; disappear as sound. DWi-P is Platinum LEED certified and located in Battery Park City's North Neighborhood. hMa are the designers for DWi-P and the North Neighborhood Master Plan.

Above: Marcel Duchamp's Large Glass, possibly the most famous work of art in the 20th Century. This piece by Duchamp suggests ideas about time, movement, space, and Einstein's Theory of Relativity, as well as a possible parable about male and female sexuality. Duchamp's painting presents thin metal forms captured between two panes of glass, within an ordinary, off-the-shelf, metal frame window.

Above: View from inside hMa's DWi-P. The Frit pattern on the wall is also a sound piece by New York composer, Michael J. Schumacher.

Above: DWi-P: a building, or a landscape behind glass. Is it simply sound? Is it water?

Above: DWi-P captures a human figure on the Murray Street ramp. At DWi-P, figures move through space with the secondary overlay of the Schumacher score. The score can be heard, through a cell-phone App.

Above: The delamination of DWi-P, at the southern end of the building, including the Passage that passes in front of the building. Layers of movement are captured within and through DWi-P's glass wall.

Above: hMa's study for the massing of the North Neighborhood. This study also depicts the 'sound field' reach of the DWi-P App. The area where visitors can hear the Schumacher score: WaTER.

This is not unlike the Duchamp Roto-Relief project: an exercise in understanding sound as form.

Above: the Entry Level plan for DWi-P. The Entry to the building is the only room that rises above the level of the roof. The roof is a Battery Park City park.

Above: 'Playing' the facade at DWi-P; to the right: a screen shot of the DWi-P App.

Above: two more screen shots of the DWi-P App.

Above: Screen-shots.

Above: View of Entry to DWi-P's Ballfield Terrace Park.

Above: View of the olympic-size pool from the entry : the main program for the Center is swimming, or Water.

Above: View of the pool and the Entry.

Above: the main level plan - reached by 'descending' - a staircase.

Above: comparison of two main stairs at DWi-P, designed to capture the act of 'Descending' from one space to another.

above: hMa : movement of the body through space.

Above: Main stair, inside DWi-P.

Above: Main Corridor along the glass wall, inside DWi-P.

Above: Olympic size pool : human movement through water.

Above: one of three ramps at DWi-P, from the Dance Studio: human movement.

Above: children play along the exterior ramp in front of DWi-P.

Above: Invisibility: the transparency of DWi-P's glass facade.

Above: Cevdet Erek - There. From the show 'Tactics of Invisibility' ; co-curated by Daniela Zyman and Emre Baykal. The show is co-produced by the Vehbi Koc Foundation, and Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Erek's installation touches on the idea of invisibility.

Above: DWi-P at night: human movement inside and outside in the Passage.

Above: DWi-P : view to the World Trade Memorial Site, across West Street. Left: view of one of the fountains at the Memorial Site: both projects feature water.

03/18/2015

Materials make Reference to the world. Buildings (and landscapes) have meaning by how they are detailed with materials.

Materiality is important in hMa's projects, and is also important when we teach. Tactility refers to how we read space with our hands. The haptic sense is a way to understand space.

Glass is different from stone. Above, we show human hands, in reference to both materials. On the left - a hand touches glass; on the right, we show hand imprints on a stone cave wall in Patagonia.

Musicians and people who deal in sound understand materiality as timbre. Timbre is a term that describes the materiality of sound.

Timbre is affected, for example, by the materiality of a Musical Instrument. A metallic instrument wired for electricity sounds very different from the same instrument as an analog.

In architecture - timbre is registered through footsteps, or the voice. These can be ‘live’ and echo; or muted and soft. Both reactions are ‘soundings’ that give very different spatial readings. This reading relates partially at least, to the materiality of the space.

Large stone halls like Cathedrals sound different from small, informal residential spaces, where sound is muted by fabrics, and materials that absorb sound, and prevent reverberation.

Each space and each object in the hMa Diagram, above, has a ‘Timbre’: WaterFall Table has stainless steel beads that reference water; DWi-P is a glass façade that represents WaTER; the LightScore is a series of light waves, 'played’ onto concrete surfaces, at the Kitchen in NYC.

hMa uses stone, glass, steel and wood in projects, as a conscious way of referencing materials and Timbre in space. Trees are living organisms - cut using calibration to impose mathematic scaling onto an organic system. Digital Water i-Pavilion's (DWi-P) façade is a sound wall scored into equal divisions. At hMa's Holley House in upstate New York, parallel stone walls make a house.

Program is – whatever you - as the designer - make it. Program is like a movie script - it’s a fantasy. The program does not exist until the designer envisions it.

I will show four hMa Programs. The first program, shown above, is: Flatness of Space, or Infrathin, demonstrated by hMa's DWi-P and hMa's design for the Queens Museum of Art. Both of these are projects with complex programs, compressed within thin, compact sections, or Infrathin// or the 'Flatness of Space'.

hMa's program of 'Repetition' is demonstrated, above, by the Won Buddhist project, where repeating channels of wood as screens - and punched windows - create a clear sense of repetition in the buildings. To the right, benches and light lines at hMa's Infinity Chapel located in downtown Manhattan, create repetition. Above, the frit pattern of the Schumacher score on the facade of DWi-P, along with the repetition of steel mullions, creates a pattern of repetition at hMa's DWi-P, at Battery Park City in NYC.

hMa also creates programs based on 'Embedded Objects'. At the left, above, is hMa's Infinity Chapel, where a series of embedded spheres create a room with curved surfaces that filter light. At the right, Pratt Pavilion sits as an embedded object between two existing 19th century industrial brick loft buildings, at Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY.

Above, we show an hMa project to demonstrate 'buildings with sound as their program'. Shown above is hMa's Ojai Pavilion also referred to as : - ‘Sound Vortex’.

hMa has spent our career working on projects that approach - Zero - as in Zero Carbon Footprint, or Invisibility. hMa’s Logo consists of two crossing lines that represent the Cartesian Grid - with a series of wave forms crossing the x-axis. The waves represent energy - including our research and focus on sound and light.

hMa are Master Plan Architects for Battery Park City’s North Neighborhood. We Designed a Master Plan for the North Neighborhood including LEED energy standards for buildings and Green Street standards for streets.

This is Victoria Meyers' ‘Sound and Light Score’ designed to be played as blasts of light at the ‘Kitchen' space for performance and art (http://thekitchen.org/) in NYC.

hMa’s LightScore led to more complex collaborations with the composer who invited hMa to present at the Kitchen, Michael Schumacher. hMa hired Schumacher to write a score : WaTER - for hMa's design for a new community center, DWi-P (Digital Water i-Pavilion) at Battery Park City.

hMa placed a transcription of the Schumacher digital score for WaTER, onto and into the façade of our building, DWi-P, at Battery Park City. Above is hMa’s drawing of ‘the event horizon of connectivity’ through the glass façade of DWi-P.

Sound, a form of Energy Wave, has been a focus of research for hMa Principal Victoria Meyers for 20 years. Meyers presents her research on sound in her new book Shape of Sound. The diagram above shows the ‘sound field’ - generated by DWi-P at Battery Park City in New York.

This is hMa’s first major public project, Chattanooga Nature Interpretive Center, designed to showcase sustainable solutions to energy use. The building featured solar panels for sunlight, and wind and water turbines - all as passive energy sources for the building. Chattanooga Nature Interpretive Center is a building designed in response to temperature, sunlight, water collection, and environmental factors.

10/05/2012

WaveLine is a small pavilion in Queens, New York, designed by Victoria Meyers architect, with hMa. The building opened in 2007, and was designed as a 'sample' wave form, in collaboration with Disney Hall acoustician Yasuhisa Toyota. The pavilion was designed as a multi-purpose sound space, for music, spoken word, and sport.

hMa's client for the building was the New York City Housing Authority. The project developed over a five year design period, that included the design of a faceted metal roof that bent in response to sound wave forms. The building was designed with acoustical wall pads that can be removed to increase the resonance of the room. The building is used for music, public meetings, and sports.

WaveLine is a building developed after the architects spent time studying wave forms. The roof shape was studied in various configurations before the architects settled on the final faceted form.

To see more information about WaveLine, visit hMa's website: www.hanrahanMeyers.com.

10/01/2012

Victoria Meyers architect (hMa) has spent years studying the effects of enhanced walls systems. Enhanced walls and other architectural
surfaces create different reactions in
people who encounter the constructions.
These systems need to be studied in a manner that moves the discipline
of architecture forward. By enhanced walls, I am referring to walls, like the wall at DWi-P, with Digital and/ or Biological systems embedded within the traditional construction system, enhancing the experience of the wall or surface, making it more immersive.

Marcel Duchamp’s
Large Glass set the stage for many of the changes in 20th and 21st
century architecture. An intervention
using emergent digital and biological systems, developed thoughtfully, would
similarly affect how the art of architecture moves forward as an art.

Working with my firm, hMa, I will be constructing wall studies with embedded sensors and study how these embedded
systems alter people’s experience and reaction to architecture. The enhanced walls would have effects that
exceed their physical area, and I would also propose to map their geographic
area of influence, and demonstrate how perceptual thickness and materiality can be
altered through these new interactive interfaces. This work would be performed as part of the hMa Research component of our practice. Look for future postings mapping hMa's progress with this area of research.

This is
research about the future of architecture. There has been a great deal of
advancement in the integration of visual information in buildings through the
use of LED and other technologies. Sound
has not been as studied, or as seamlessly integrated in architecture. With the ubiquity of cellphone use, sound and
visual information as a fourth dimensional expression of architectural space is
an emergent possibility. I will be mapping the possibilities of sound in architecture in my upcoming book, 'shape of sound'.

The most important research in sound and architecture to date was by Leon Theremin. At EMPAC, Johnannes Goebel overviewed the development of an amazing building dedicated to sound, using the latest technologies. EMPAC is located on the Rensselaer Polytechnic campus, in Troy, New York.

07/11/2012

The Digital Water Pavilion (DWiP) is a new 55,000 square foot building conceived as a built landscape and situated at the base of two new residential towers in Battery Park City’s North Neighborhood. The primary architectural feature of the new Center is a curved 550-foot long glass arcade wall facing West Street immediately north of Ground Zero. The arcade wall features a patterned interpretation of a composition, ‘WaTER’, commissioned from New York City composer Michael Schumacher. The glass wall sits opposite two swimming pools and a gymnasium inside the building and two ballfields and a soccer field outside the building. A new public promenade follows the curve of the arcade adjacent to the ballfields, connecting north to south from Murray to Warren Streets, providing access to the Ballfields.

The arcade has three courtyards (see photos below), with a stair in the central courtyard connecting the Ballfields to the Ballfield Terrace above, the Green Roof above DWiP. The 16,000 square foot Terrace designed with SCAPE landscape architects has a series of ramps and stairs that reach out to the landscape and other parks in Battery Park City. DWiP's roof, the Ballfield Terrace, is an occupiable Green Roof with benches and planted areas, linked to other BPC Parks, including Teardrop Park to the west.

DWiP: north courtyard

DWiP: south courtyard posted Victoria Meyers architect

Other program areas in the Pavilion include a gymnasium (pictured below), pool room (pictured below), dance studios, a state-of-the-art theater, and classrooms on the second floor. Digital Water i-Pavilion is scheduled to receive a Platinum LEED rating. hMa are also the Master Plan Architects for Battery Park City’s North Neighborhood, and developed the guidelines for the buildings, landscaping, and walking paths in the North Neighborhood. DWiP is scheduled to open in September 2012.

07/03/2012

Victoria Meyers architect recommends the July 1, 2011 article by Charles McGrath and Dan Barry, reviewing sound levels and islands of quiet in New York City. The piece goes hand-in-hand with hMa's upcoming book 'Shape of Sound', by hMa principal Victoria Meyers. Shape of Sound looks at various projects by hMa, including Ojai Fesitval Shell in Ojai, California, and DWiP (Battery Park City Community Center) - and their relationship to sound phenomena and investigations by sound artists and composers.

The book includes exerpts from correspondence between the sound art and contemporary music patron Betty Freeman, who died in 2009. Ms. Freeman was famous as the 'little old lady' who met composer Phillip Glass when he was working as a New York City cab driver to make ends meet. Ms. Freeman discovered that Mr. Glass was a talented composer unable to support his artistic career, and gave Mr. Glass funding that allowed him to pursue musical composition full time. The book contains exerpts and copies of correspondence between Ms. Freeman and composer Harry Partch, whose hand-made musical 'instruments' and compositions are on view at the Partch Instrumentarium, also supported by Ms. Freeman, at Montclair State University.

The Times article appears below. hMa will be posting exerpts from Victoria's upcoming 'Shape of Sound', in upcoming blog posts.

Photographs by Ty Cacek/The New York Times

"Forty thousand fireworks. Now that’s bound to make some noise. There are New Yorkers who will love every decibel on the Fourth of July, when Macy’s puts on its “biggest fireworks display in America.” Other New Yorkers — well, they’d much rather see the rockets’ red glare than hear the bursting in air. Certainly all city dwellers are used to noise, but there are those who hear a symphony in the cacophony and those who seek out New York’s many pockets of peace and quiet. Here, two views. Which do you prefer, the cacophony of New York or the quiet?"

06/28/2012

Victoria Meyers architect is pleased to present hMa's DWiP (Digital Water i-Pavilion), a building that proposes an interactive surface (edge) where visitors share an interactive experience in the city of New York. The experience is interactive as a live event, and also through an App, developed as a mirrored experience of the building.

DWiP's 550-foot long etched glass facade interacts with smart devices through an interactive media surface that embraces urban design, and encourages social interactions between participants, at the edge between Battery Park City and the lower west side of Manhattan.

DWiP marks the eastern edge of Battery Park City at the Ballfields. DWiP connects pedestrians within Battery Park City's North Neighborhood to the West Side Highway pedestrian crossing from Battery Park City to the National Sept. 11 Memorial and the World Trade Center site.

DWiP's 550-foot long glass facade is an interactive space of mediated interaction where visitors will be encouraged to post ideas, reactions, and thoughts about New York City, the waterfront, the Irish Hunger Memorial, Poets House, Teardrop Park, and other significant sites in the area. The edge is also interactive through the DWiP App, where visitors will be able to interact with the frit pattern on the building's glass, as well as the Michael Schumacher sound piece, WaTER.

Books by hMa

Victoria Meyers: Designing With Light
New York Architects Victoria Meyers and Thomas Hanrahan believe that architecture is an environment, 'pure space', manifested in nature. The principals of hanrahanMeyers architects (hMa) have established themselves as unique visionaries, incorporating light and sound into their arresting designs of pure forms. Founded in 1987, the firm specializes in residences, art centers, and community spaces. They design spaces from a vision that connects visitors with the natural world.
www.designingwithlight.us

The Conservation FundAs part of our nature based vision for architecture, hMa gives a percentage of the firm’s annual revenues to nature initiatives. This year, hMa funded ‘Wildlife Corridors’, through the Conservation Fund. ‘Wildlife Corridors’ provide natural zones through cities and towns that link animals with adjacent nature preserves. This initiative is one of several cutting-edge planning initiatives that forward thinking architects will be adopting as we seek to harmonize human habitats with nature and create sustainable development.